friends, friends

Sev­eral Notes to Self: first one up… remem­ber last sum­mer when the first really hot day, I mean REALLY hot day came and you decided to turn on the AC? Did you hap­pen to be doing laun­dry at the same time? Well, don’t! I did the same thing tonight and then blasted into total recall as the elec­tric­ity shut down and we were plunged into dark­ness at 9:30. Avery does not do tremen­dously well in total dark­ness, plus any unex­pected set of cir­cum­stances con­vinces her com­pletely that I’m a total nin­com­poop idiot and inca­pable of han­dling any­thing the least bit chal­leng­ing. “I’ll fol­low you with a can­dle, Mommy, in case there’s any­thing I can do,” she said bravely, until she dis­cov­ered that fol­low­ing me would involve… drum roll please… the BASE­MENT. EEEKK!!!

Any­way, I flipped the dryer switch, the AC switch and the thing marked “MAIN” (feel­ing con­fi­dent that, with­out an E on the end, I wouldn’t inad­ver­tently cut off elec­tri­cal sup­plies to an entire Down East state). Noth­ing hap­pened. Waited five min­utes or so (in the TOTAL base­ment dark­ness, sur­rounded, I knew, by mouse­traps, spi­der­webs and… well, that’s all, actu­ally, besides a Christ­mas tree stand and sev­eral bot­tles of flat cham­pagne). Tried the switches again, noth­ing. So I called the power com­pany and reported it and lit ten thou­sand votive can­dles and fielded Avery’s panic.

Then, in sheer bore­dom, I went down there once more and ran­domly threw the switches again, and HAL­LELU­JAH! Every­thing back on, although I imme­di­ately turned off the dryer. I can def­i­nitely go until tomor­row with­out my pool tow­els being cozy and tumble-dried. Then, how­ever, I real­ized the power com­pany was still send­ing some­one out, and sure enough, up our dear, dark road came an enor­mous truck with a huge CRANE and a search­light. He passed our house despite our sem­a­phores of “stop, stop,” no doubt because the house was lit up like a Christ­mas tree so clearly we didn’t need him? But I said, “He’ll be back,” so we sat down among the mos­qui­toes and moths and ants on the front step, admired that por­tion of the picket fence we could see if we didn’t turn our heads toward the bit felled by the gravel guy… and back the elec­tri­cal guy came. He trained his super-duper search­lights directly into the bed­room of the baby across the road, I have no doubt, as I waved wildly through his wind­screen. Then we saw him don an orange plas­tic hard hat, and pick up a pair of GOG­GLES (Always Be Pre­pared) and descend from the cab of the truck.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, “but I called the power com­pany back to say every­thing was OK, but I was on hold FOR­EVER.” “That’s all right, ma’am,” he said, doff­ing his hat and mak­ing me feel incred­i­bly OLD, “we were in the neigh­bor­hood any­way.” “Well, it’s good to know you’re on the job,” I said, and shook his hand. He got back in his very impres­sive truck (still wear­ing the hard hat, although the gog­gles had not appeared), and drove off, honk­ing lightly to indi­cate his sol­i­dar­ity as he passed.

Sigh.

Friends indeed. What would we do with­out them? They smooth our dri­ve­ways. Rol­lie came first thing the morn­ing after I threw myself on his mercy, and as you see, smoothed every­thing out. He accepted a blue­berry and rasp­berry pan­cake after­ward and hung out at the pic­nic table, dis­cussing with me the options as regards our win­dowsills, sadly in need of paint. “Why don’t let’s wait until John is here, to decide? He has that lawyerly sort of voice, if you know what I mean, not that he’s ever been a lawyer, but you know. People’ll lis­ten to him.” Shoot, but not to me? Def­i­nitely not. Fair enough. Thank you, Rol­lie, for mak­ing my dri­ve­way dri­ve­able. I spent the rest of the day alter­nately rejoic­ing over it and find­ing bits I needed to shovel and rake to make it all straight, and can I tell you? Gravel is HEAVY. It likes to stay where it is. I hurt in mus­cles I never knew I had.

Then it was onto more per­fect friend encoun­ters. We were dying to see Alyssa, how­ever unen­cum­bered, sadly, she is with chil­dren, with Elliot and Annabelle both com­mit­ted to camps involv­ing WAY too much of their sum­mers, in my opin­ion! How I miss them both. But we agreed to meet Alyssa in Green­wich, as a sort of halfway point, and then it turned out Becky and her fam­ily would JUST have arrived, although with no fur­ni­ture and so in a hotel. So the day turned into friend heaven. First lunch at “Aux Delices”, the cater­ing out­fit and dar­ling cafe run by the lady who used to run “Mon­tra­chet” in our old Tribeca haunts… we each had a divine bean salad that I came home and com­pletely suc­cess­fully repli­cated, although it took me a day to find out what the “green” bean was…

Three Bean Salad with Red Pep­per, Green Onion and Sweet­corn
(serves 6-ish)

1 can each “small white beans,” black beans, THOR­OUGHLY rinsed and drained
1 cup edamame (soy beans)
3 ears sweet­corn, lightly boiled and cut off the cob and sep­a­rated
2 bunches scal­lions, cut on the bias right into the green part, in nice sliv­ers
1 red pep­per, juli­enned
1 clove gar­lic, smashed into tiny smithereens
1/3 cup olive oil
1 tbsp wasabi horse­rad­ish sauce (or blended with mus­tard)
juice of 1 lemon
sea salt to taste

Com­bine all the veg­eta­bles in a large bowl. Then shake together every­thing from the gar­lic onwards in a small jar and pour over salad, then toss thor­oughly. Very nice!

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I think if you wanted to add shred­ded roast chicken to this, or even seared tuna, you’d be in busi­ness for a fine entire lunch. As it was, it was lovely with the fresh­est tomato-mozzarella sand­wich you ever tasted, on the side.

We shopped! Nor­mally I hate to shop. See­ing more than about two dozen things in a shop makes me want to give every­thing I own to Oxfam or Good­will, never mind buy­ing any­thing NEW. But Anne Fontaine for a black t-shirt blouse, and JCrew for a ruf­fled v-neck button-up t-shirt? Done! Mostly it was beyond lovely just to fol­low Alyssa around, gos­sip­ing, shar­ing gos­sip on Tribeca news, John’s job news, Avery’s Prize Day and play news, Jill’s preg­nancy news… total plea­sure, total fun.

And then Becky was there! With Anna and Ellie, jump­ing out of the car to greet Avery. “I feel I already know you!” Alyssa said to Becky, jump­ing on Becky’s same words! To see my two best friends finally meet­ing each other almost made up for the real­iza­tion that now I’ve said good­bye to BOTH of them. No fair! How have I been lucky enough to have either one of them, much less both. I will not whine.

Off to fol­low Becky to their new house (empty!) to tour the glo­ri­ous place and the gor­geous grounds, com­plete with pond in which the girls felt it was nec­es­sary to throw many, many stones try­ing to rouse some­thing under the sur­face… I can pic­ture the whole fam­ily, fire­places, gor­geous kitchen, high ceil­ings, rolling lawns… We sat and chat­ted and rem­i­nisced and silently wished we could turn back the clock and be back in Lon­don, ready for the whole adven­ture to start again.

But there will be new adven­tures. Among them was… get­ting back to Red Gate Farm! How hard it seems to be for me to go ANY­WHERE with­out get­ting well and truly lost, no mat­ter how well I write things down. I ended up throw­ing myself on the mercy of a whole VERY Amer­i­can pic­nic table­ful of Amer­i­can guys out­side some nice IT com­pany, beg­ging them to tell me how to get to I-95. There is some­thing irre­sistibly Amer­i­can about guys in short-sleeve tennis-y sort of shirts, drink­ing Bud­weiser, look­ing crisp-cut and inno­cent and friendly. They fell all over them­selves to help me find I-95, and it was such a going-home expe­ri­ence, that American-ness. I can’t define it, but there’s some­thing boy­ish, kind-hearted, joy­ous and com­pe­tent about that pro­file that both reminds me of John and also makes me real­ize how far his gen­eral pro­file has come from there, since we’ve been away. It’s still part of him, but only part.

I did get home!

Another note to self: if you know FULL WELL your wash­ing machine has a dia­bol­i­cal spin cycle, and that you’ve put your nice bed­spread into it… don’t leave the plas­tic con­tainer of laun­dry deter­gent on top of it to… fall off. And split open, onto the floor of the laun­dry room. EEWW! Not as nasty as some­thing NASTY being spread all over my laun­dry room, but still, a big fat mess.

We’ve been enjoy­ing the gor­geous sunny days… but we’re miss­ing John and wait­ing for his arrival next month… can’t wait.